


an acre before us

by illinoise



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: M/M, Modern AU, Nail Polish, gender role ANGST, i just like writing domestic javid let me live, jack is an annoying but supportive bf, let davey paint his nails 2kforever, literally just them for this whole thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 11:53:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13810650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illinoise/pseuds/illinoise
Summary: "The negatives of a label start here, though: him, sitting on his bed, staring down a bottle of nail polish on the dresser."





	an acre before us

**Author's Note:**

> i've had a super crappy couple days so i wrote this as a like pick-me-up thing! cool. it's set in the same au as my other fic the riddles that you speak, so i'll probably make a series of oneshots fr this universe. in short, davey buys nail polish and overthinks. enjoi

David Jacobs is a boy.

He’s the kind of person who likes a label; he and Jack are different in that way. It’s nice to have something, a word, to curl himself around and know belongs to him. Jack is fine to color outside the lines, to kiss boys and girls and not worry and let people think what they will. Davey respects that. It just isn’t him.

He likes things to make sense. He likes patterns and numbers and science and there’s nothing scientific about allowing a thing to just be. A label is like rope around him, holding the pieces together, sorting them into slots. Some people feel confined by the rope—Davey feels safe. 

The negatives of a label start here, though: him, sitting on his bed, staring down a bottle of nail polish on the dresser.

He’d passed it at the store a few days ago and hadn’t thought about what he was doing when he slipped it into the cart. The color’s nothing crazy, just white, and when the old lady behind the register had scanned it she smiled. “Shopping for the girlfriend, I see.”

He’d just let out an awkward laugh and taken the bag too fast, shoving it behind lettuce and paper towels. 

Because there are things. Things he’s clung to for a long time. Katherine is endless about gender being a construct, and while he knows it’s true it doesn’t change the fear of holding Jack’s hand in a new part of town. He can analyze it all he likes how humans have a binary to make themselves comfortable, but it doesn’t mean the world is analyzing it with him. 

Davey remembers a conversation with Jack a month ago; he was in the shower and Jack was brushing his teeth at the counter.

“I might start buying women’s soap,” he’d said. “You know, it’s way cheaper than all the for men stuff.”

Jack took his toothbrush out of his mouth and looked at him. “Then go ahead. Will you stop loving me if I smell like cherry blossom instead of Axe?”

“No,” Davey had answered, pushing his face into the spray, because Jack might be a dumbass in many areas but he has David Jacobs down pat. Davey wasn’t asking Jack’s permission to buy stupid cherry blossom soap--he was asking himself.

So here he is, looking at his white nail polish. Last week he got flowery-scented body wash, and that hadn’t felt so big. Body wash isn’t a thing you put on yourself that everyone can stare at, that lets everyone make assumptions.

He looks at his nails. They’re long but not unkempt, shining slightly in the light of their bedroom. 

Jack’s got a terrible habit of biting his nails down to the quick and beyond. Davey hates it. If he ever catches him, he’ll swat his hand away from his mouth. Sometimes Jack’ll stick up his middle finger and then start biting with even more intent; other times he’ll let his hand fall like Davey’s just exposed some dirty secret.

The front door rattles distantly with the clatter of Jack and he scrambles to tuck the nail polish into his sock drawer. If he can’t face this himself, he is not ready to face it with a crowd.

Jack is getting home from lunch with Kath; he needed her help for a paper he’s writing. He drops his paint-stained backpack down into one of the kitchen chairs. Davey can’t help smiling--Jack is just a paint-stained person. He doesn’t have one pair of jeans that aren’t ruined.

“Hi.” Davey shuffles up into his chest, needing a Jack Kelly squeeze after the day he’s had. Jack gets the message and gives him exactly the hug he needs, the kind that presses his face into Jack’s t-shirt and drowns out the sound of the world for just a minute.

“Good?” Jack asks.

Davey lets out a muffled grunt of assent. He’s sad when Jack moves away, though, and takes the white noise out of his ears.

“Down day?” Jack asks, slipping his shoes off and ruffling Davey’s hair. 

“Not really. Just off.”

“What’re the socks today?” Jack asks him, flipping on the hall light.

Davey follows him into their shared room and drapes himself over the bed, lifting his feet. “Sharks and Mona Lisa.”

Jack rolls his eyes. “Every day I lose just a little more hope you’ll ever match your damn socks.”

“I’m telling you, sock goblins. They wait in the dryer and take matches.” He watches Jack dig for clean socks with bated breath. He doesn’t seem to see anything--just pulls out his boring black ones and puts them on. Davey reaches out a hand, expecting a kiss at least, and is offended when Jack walks past him. “Where are you going?”

“Bathroom.” Jack grins. “Wanna come?”

Davey sighs. “I can wait. I’m not in the mood for kink negotiation.”

“Ew,” Jack says, rather unenthusiastically, and then again, once he’s thought about it. _“Ew!”_

When he returns, he drops right on top of Davey, earning himself an angry wheeze.

“Get off,” Davey whines, shoving at him.

Jack doesn’t listen, which is unusual in no way at all, and continues to smother him. “You feelin’ sick or something?”

Davey shrugs. Jack rolls onto his back on top of him, not making much effort to keep from jamming his elbows and knees into soft spots and earning himself more angry grumbling. 

They lay there for a second, both looking up at the ceiling, Davey’s breaths ruffling Jack’s hair slightly. 

“Not sick, just… I dunno,” Davey says.

“You’re so weird,” Jack complains, biting at his earlobe.

Davey breathes in against Jack’s shirt; it smells like flowers.

This is something he has to do by himself.

-

He gets a step further the next evening; he takes the cap off the nail polish.

The smell is a lot stronger than he’s expecting. 

He’s so captivated that he doesn’t realize he’s been standing there and letting it drip onto the black dresser. “Shit,” he hisses, screwing the lid back on and rushing to get a towel. 

He tries to wipe it off, but a spot of white remains, staining the surface.

-

They’re eating dinner--that kind of gross but also addictive in a way processed food can only be canned ravioli--when Davey blurts, “What do you think of guys who wear nail polish?”

Jack looks startled, his fork stopping midair. “What do I think of them?”

“Yeah, like, I dunno. What are your thoughts?”

“I think people can do what they want,” Jack answers, shrugging. He spears one of Davey’s raviolis and feeds it to him, then continues, “it’s not my business who wants to paint their nails--why, do you want to?”

Davey shrugs.

Jack frowns. “Well, if you’re worried I’ll leave you if you paint your nails, don’t be. Just, uh, if you do, don’t get those super long ones? Because then--”

Davey winces. “Please don’t finish that sentence.”

Jack gives him one of those wicked grins, leaves an unnecessarily wet kiss on his cheek, and takes their bowls to the sink. “You got sauce on me,” Davey complains over his shoulder, and laughter echoes back at him.

-

It doesn’t give him the push he needs, though. The idea of Jack’s disapproval isn’t the reason for his hesitation. This is his own thing, his own tangle of thoughts and masculinity and stains on the dresser. 

He’s closed himself in the bathroom and set the nail polish on the sink, staring at it like a child into a fishbowl. It distorts his features like water, or at least it feels like it does, and he averts his eyes before he’s twisted beyond recognition.

Jack is half-asleep in bed in their room just a wall away. David meets his own eyes in the mirror. 

He unscrews the cap, lifts up his sleeve, and swipes the small brush across his shoulder. Facing himself sideways in the mirror, he appraises the little mark of white. It’s cold and sparkly and so very, very scary.

Suddenly he jumpstarts, letting his sleeve fall back down and tucking the polish into a new hiding spot. He feels ridiculous as he flees from something that can’t even chase him, sprinting across the carpet until he’s protected from the big scary world in Jack’s arms.

“Mmm,” Jack groans, squeezing Davey and letting his head fall between his shoulders.

“I’m scared,” Davey whispers into the dark, reaching up to his own chest where Jack’s hand rests and touching it. “Scared of nail polish, isn’t that lame? I don’t wanna change everything right when I was sure of who I am.”

The response is nothing but a little snore.

-

He calls Katherine in the morning. “Hey. Are you busy today?”

“A little bit but you’re more important,” she says. “What do you need?”

“I… well,” Davey says, because honestly he doesn’t know the answer to that question. “You’ll see when you get here.”

She shows up at his apartment within ten minutes and gives him a hug. “Are you alright?”

“Slightly,” Davey says, and words don’t suffice in any other way so he just shows her. He leads her to the kitchen table and gestures to the nail polish sitting in the center of it. Kath picks it up, lips pursed in confusion, and then sees his face and understands.

“You sure?” she asks.

“No,” he answers, taking a deep breath. “That’s why I need you to do it.”

She instructs him to get an old towel or magazine--they lay one of Jack’s countless “paint towels” down across the scratched table. “Hand me,” she orders, and he puts his hand down on the rainbow-splotched blue cloth.

He watches, chest drawn tight, as she lifts up the brush. He’s almost expecting it to hurt--so when she drips some white onto his index finger, the lack of feeling surprises him. “All good?” she asks, eyes glued to his face.

He nods. She keeps going, smoothing it across his nails and cleaning around the edges. She doesn’t ask him any questions, and he loves her for that; they both just watch as his nails, one by one, turn white.

She pulls back when his left hand is finished. “What do you think?”

He lifts it and examines his fingers. Katherine giggles at the look on his face. 

His hand looks almost fake, too smoothed over to be real, and he’s shaking his head without even realizing it. People could see this hand in passing, as he cashes in money at the bank or holds on on the bus, and think things about him. He envisions it on the piano, pounding out melodies in its forbidden perfection. He’s taken the nail polish bottle, with its menacing stare, and thrown it down the goddamn stairs. 

“I like it,” he says, and he does. “It’s… I like it.”

“Want me to do the other?” Katherine asks.

He puts it up on the table without a word.

As she layers on the paint, she says, “So. Explain. Where did this come from?”

“I saw it. At the store. And I got it.”

He knows that’s not enough. “I’ve just been thinking lately,” he says, suddenly unable to bear looking at what she’s doing. “I’ve been thinking about what it means if a guy gets colorful soap for the shower or puts on nail polish, and it felt like me and that scared me because I thought I knew me and the me I knew I was would never have wanted either of those things.”

She smiles. “What you just said makes no sense but I get it. Sometimes I wanna cut my hair super short but then I’m like, I don’t want to look like a lesbian. And I hate that thought because what does a lesbian even look like? Why do I care if I ‘look like’ what I am?”

“Yeah, see,” Davey says, “you’re better with words than me.”

She finishes his thumb and lets him gawk at his newly finished hands. He looks up at her, then, nervous that he’s different now.

“Hey,” she says with a smile, “I know you.”

-

Jack misses nothing. Davey’s not like him, always jumping from thing to thing to thing and observing every bit of life that passes by him. He skillfully keeps his hands hidden for the first few minutes, but when he sits on the counter to watch Jack do the dishes, he hears a gasp.

Jack runs to him, leaving the sink running, and picks up one of his hands. “Did you do this?” he asks.

“No,” he says, blushing. “Kath did.”

Jack lets out a little laugh, turning his hand over like his fingers are precious artifacts. Then he goes quiet, looking up into Davey’s face as if he’s seeing something he hasn’t ever seen there before. “It’s pretty. You’re pretty.”

Davey huffs and sits up straighter. “Excuse you. I’m rugged. I’m _manly.”_

Jack lets out his sharp laugh. “Yeah, you’re a hunk, Jacobs.”

Davey lifts his fingers to Jack’s cheeks and squishes them; and it _is_ pretty the way they look there, he can’t deny that. “Go turn off the sink. We’re having a drought, you know.”

So he does. Davey lets his hands fall; he’s looking down, so he isn’t expecting a sudden, forceful kiss from Jack. He takes it in stride, though, wrapping his legs around Jack’s waist from his spot on the counter.

“So you’re not gonna leave me?” Davey asks with a smile.

Jack shakes his head, firmly, and picks up Davey’s hand. “Never.”

“What if I had a mullet?”

“I’d be disappointed,” Jack says with a laugh, “but I’d stay.”

They’re silent for a few beats, until Davey glances up at Jack again and shoves him in the chest. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”

Jack smiles. “You’re pretty,” he says. “For real. You are.”

-

“So I’ve been thinking,” Jack says when Davey comes out of the bathroom after a shower.

Davey smirks. “Uh-oh.”

Jack sticks his tongue out at him from the bed. “You know those, like, really elaborate nails people do? You know, with little designs on them?”

Davey raises his eyebrows. “Yeah.”

“I was thinking, maybe I could learn how to do that. I know it’s really tiny but it looks like fun. All it takes is practice, right?”

“Practice where?” Davey asks, to hide the warmth growing in his chest.

“On you, duh.”

This is not a new thing. Jack always draws and paints on Davey--his arms, his back, his face. “Am I just your practice canvas?”

“Yeah, otherwise I’d draw on the walls.”

“You know, dating you is a lot like raising a three-year-old.”

“I never claimed to be an adult.”

-

Jack, a man of his word, gets a little nail-art kit the next time he goes out and forces Davey to let him try it out. Davey, who has learned to expect disaster out of anything Jack does, is surprised to find he’s got a serious knack for it.

He leans close to Davey’s nails, eyes squinted in concentration, making tiny swirls on one and using flower stencils and tiny sequins on others. Of course, he fucks up in a couple of places, but for his first time, it’s pretty damn good.

Davey runs his thumb over a small pink flower. “Did you just… know how to do that?”

“I watched tons of videos,” Jack admits. “Don’t start watching them, you won’t be able to stop.”

He picks up Davey’s hand and interlocks their fingers. The difference between them is stark now, pronounced by sparkles and color.

Davey likes it.

“This is my newest thing,” Jack informs him. “You’re gonna have a new design on your nails every week.”

Davey laughs. “For free? Score.”

“No, you’re right, actually I’ll charge you forty bucks each time.”

“I hope you realize that Kath and Sarah are gonna make you do theirs. And probably Race too.” Davey looks at him. “You should paint yours. It might keep you from biting them.”

Jack bites his lip. “I don’t think I’m ready for that,” he says. “Not just yet.”

Davey squeezes his hand. That’s okay, too.

**Author's Note:**

> come visit on tumblr @livingchancy<333


End file.
